Earlier this week the Francis MacManus Short Story Competition announced newcomer to fiction Colin Walsh as winner of this year’s contest for his story: The Flare Carves Itself Through The Dark.
The Francis MacManus Short Story Competition, in memory of the writer and RTÉ radio producer Francis MacManus, has been an important launch pad for new and emerging writers ever since 1986. Past winners include Claire Keegan, Molly McCloskey, Anthony Glavin and Nuala O’Connor.
Colin wins €3,000 euros and his story will be broadcast on Monday October 2 at 11.20pm on RTÉ Radio 1 in the Book on One slot. This is his winning short story. Reproduced with the permission of RTÉ Radio One.
RTÉ Radio 1 / SoundCloud
Absolute melter of a summer that year. The air throbbed, everything solid dilating. Shirtless lads with see-sawing shoulders glowered with 99s dribbling over their knuckles while the young wans glistened in the shade, make-up warping in the heat. Even the tarmac was sweating. I spent my breaks on the warm steps of the Cineplex, watching them suck the last nectar out of the hottest August the town ever had.
I’d been inside the Cineplex since the Leaving, shovelling the popcorn, pouring the popcorn, serving the popcorn. Midges swarmed in drifts around my bike every afternoon as I cycled to work along the water’s edge. Even when the whole town slurred, the river flowed on and on. The evening sun sets there were nightmares of tortured colour. I cycled home at their tail-end after work, headphones in, my bike gliding beneath strange veins of light which coursed over the town till darkness fell.
That Saturday, the final one of the holidays, was the summer’s nuclear peak; one final flare and it’d gutter out like a candle. Everything felt haunted by the future. After that weekend, a fresh batch of kids would bust the town walls open and barrel down arterial roads that had once looped off the world. They’d spill giddy onto motorways and get bellied off to bigger lives at colleges up and down the country. I’d be one of them; successfully lost to the future, not looking back. I’d just turned eighteen and spent the past year getting up at 5am to do two hour’s study before breakfast, feathering my bedroom walls with flashcards till it looked like the lair of some maniac. Now college beckoned. I was about to get myself born.
The Cineplex foyer was a riot of chatter for the final Saturday showing. I was working my last shift alone, which I actually enjoyed: I shovelled the popcorn, poured the popcorn, served the popcorn; I took the tickets, tore the tickets, returned the tickets. The foyer quivered like a coiled spring, people ordering their sweets in rabid voices, jabbering loudly about their college plans. They never asked about my plans, though we’d all been in school together. That was okay. I’d decided long ago that our town was a nowhere; it was okay to be a nothing in a nowhere. Next week I’d finally be somewhere; I might become a something in a somewhere.
In the queue I saw Teabag Lyons and his girlfriend, Lisa. A curd of gum hopped about Lisa’s mouth like a swab of popcorn bouncing around a pot. Teabag had one hand tucked into her arse pocket and the other down the front of his trackies. He eyeballed the world, daring it to have an opinion. At the time, I had no strong emotions for Teabag, only the vague muscle-memory sort-of-fear everyone had of him and his brother. His brother had emigrated to Australia but got turned back at the border. People called him Boomerang behind his back. I didn’t even know his real name.
Lisa grinned when they reached the counter. ‘Howya Dan!’ I blushed a hello. We’d been in playschool together. Now she was grinding her jaw, making her order, eyes all moon-pooled. We used to share crayons. Teabag didn’t even look at me. Something was off about his face, his mouth. ‘Off to college next week?’ Lisa said, not waiting for an answer. ‘You were always such a brain-box. Where you heading?’ ‘Dublin,’ I said. ‘Trinity.’ ‘Well, law-dee-daw!’ Her cheeks shimmered. ‘Your grandparents must be thrilled.’
I smiled, despite the rash coiling up my neck, because Nanny and Grandad had both cried happy tears when I told them. Grandad hid his by putting on the kettle. ‘Trinity College’, he repeated all evening, in accents of increasingly absurd poshness. ‘Treh-no-taaaay-caw-laaaaaaaage’.
I put their Cokes on the counter and began telling her about my plans when Teabag cut me off, clicking his fingers in my face. I saw for the first time that he was wearing a blue mouthguard over his teeth. ‘Nyust gib us the muckin’ bobcorn’, he said. I bowed my head and served the popcorn.
‘Tell your Nanny I was asking after her’, Lisa said as they left. Teabag shouldered into Eoin Duggan, nearly drowning him with two Cokes. Before they disappeared into Screen 4, Lisa called back, ‘Enjoy Dublin!’
Duggan came to the counter, rubbing his chest where Teabag had rammed him. ‘Nobody’s gonna miss that mong-child’, he said. ‘What happened his mouth?’ I said.
‘Himself and Boomerang pissed off the wrong people,’ he said. ‘Some lads got a hold of Teabag last week to prove the point. Made him bite on a brick while they kicked his belly asunder. He has to wear that blue yoke till he gets surgery.’ ‘Jesus Christ’, I said.
‘Giveths and takeths away’, Duggan grinned, making an exaggerated sign of the cross. I clocked the ’18 Today’ birthday badge attached to his Slipknot T-shirt. ‘Happy birthday,’ l said. ‘Cheers dude,’ he laughed. ‘Myself and Rachel are meeting a crew in the woods after the film if you fancy’.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I lied. Duggan and I used to share Pokemon cards when we were kids. He had never once picked on me. ‘Give us your number so,’ he said. ‘We’ll keep a few cans aside for you.’
I didn’t want to go bushing in the woods, but I gave him my number anyway. Duggan’s girlfriend Rachel called from the door of Screen 4. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I don’t wanna miss the trailers.’ When they left, the foyer was empty, and I was alone.
During the film I hoovered the empty auditoriums, counted the till and imagined my final bike ride home. Just me and the gargling water. I’d stop for a moment to watch the river one last time. That’s how I’d say goodbye to the town. No tears or big gesture, just some intimate salutation to the turbulence twisting past me before life began. Then Dublin. Housemates. Friends. Maybe a girlfriend, one day. All those names from TV and radio: ‘the Luas’; ‘the DART’; ‘Stephen’s Green’; ‘the Grand Canal’. The neon lights of a real city in rain.
I was thinking all this when the door of Screen 4 burst open and Duggan ran across the foyer. His hair and t-shirt were drenched in Coke, the birthday badge gone. Rachel came calling after him, but Duggan was already out the door.
She stormed up to me, glaring daggers. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be keeping an eye on things here?’ she snarled. Mascara was worming down her cheeks. She pointed to Screen 4. ‘That gummy prick in there is ruining everything.’ There was no manager. There was only me. I said I’d take care of it.
I watched myself cross the foyer, enter the darkness of Screen 4; I heard the click of my torch, and saw the light beam splitting the dark. I felt the room turn, the ripple of anticipation. Teabag was sitting with his feet on the backs of two empty seats. Lisa was feasting on his neck. I saw the way he watched me approaching. I still see it.
I cleared my throat, not sure what to say. But he spoke first.
‘Whannya thmilin’ bout?’ he said. There was a long pause. Then I said, ‘I’m not smiling.’ I could hear the tremor in my voice. ‘So you’re gibbin’ me cheek ?’ he said.
‘He’s not giving cheek, babe’, Lisa said. Teabag stood slowly, his eyes never leaving me. Lisa reached for his sleeve but he slapped her arm back and began to step up. ‘You gibbin’ me cheek?’ He was in my face now, flooding my eyes. He knocked the torch out of my hand. He clapped his forehead hard against mine and kept it there, continuing to stride forward, pushing me back with his skull.
‘You were thmilin’ a’me’, he said. His breath was drink and cigarettes. ‘Think I’m munny? Think I’m muck in’ munny?’
His forehead was caving mine, pushing me back and down, back and down. His eyes were forked nothing. I waited for him to cluck his head back and bring the full weight of his skull crunching onto the bridge of my nose. A spurt of blood and agony. I heard Lisa’s voice: ‘He’s harmless, Teabag. Jesus, he’s only harm less.’
I don’t know if it was the humiliation of that word, of being named like that before the world, but some flare surged through me in that moment and I suddenly shoved Teabag. I shoved him so hard that he stumbled back over Lisa’s knees and fell between the seat rows.
The audience roared as Teabag climbed to his feet. I hunched my shoulders over and raised my shaking arms before my face, like that’d somehow lessen the carnage about to rain down on me. Lisa sprang up between us and spread her arms wide.
‘He’s not worth it,’ she hissed. ‘He’s not worth it.’ My lip was trembling. Teabag had his shoulders spread, ready to bulldoze me. ‘Let’s just get out of here, babe,’ Lisa whispered to him, stroking his face. His stare didn’t soften, but he didn’t make any moves towards me either.
We stayed frozen in that tableau for about eighteen years. Then Lisa stepped backwards, arms open like Christ. She stayed between us as Teabag stalked out the row and down the steps. He almost tore the emergency doors off their hinges on his way out. Lisa followed, carrying their stuff. She didn’t look back.
One or two people gave a mocking slow clap as I closed the emergency doors. I was glad the room was dark.
In the foyer, Rachel was already gone. It was just me again. I stood rubbing my forehead, like I’d been marked. When the movie was over, I turned on the lights, collected the popcorn boxes, and dumped the paper cups. There was a sticky puddle of Coke where Teabag had baptised Duggan. I stood before it for a while. Chest thundering. I thought of leaving the stain there as some sort of gesture. In the end I just mopped it up.
When I finished, I saw I’d a missed call from an unknown number. I thought it’d be Nanny, checking in with me before bed. But it wasn’t. It was Rachel.
‘Hey Daniel, Rachel here. Duggie’s girlfriend… Look, thanks for earlier… Going into that gobshite the way you did was… y’know, fair play, like. Heard you pure faced him down too.’
In the background I could hear Duggan chant, Daniel and the lions!’ and Rachel giggled. ‘Yeah. You should totally come for a few cans in the woods. A few heads here are moving to Dublin next week too, it’d be good for ye to meet up. So… yeah. Maybe see you later? Sorry if I was mean. Bye.’
The message clicked off. I played it again. Then I hesitated, looking at the dimness of the empty foyer. I texted Nanny.
Few lads at work want to go for pints for my last day
I imagined her and Grandad in the sitting room, delighted I was finally out drinking like some normal young fella. Nanny replied as I typed in the door code outside the Cineplex:
THAT’S GREAT LOVE DO YOU HAV UR KEY
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed again.
ENJOY URSELF U DESERVE IT HAV A GREAT NITE X
The air was still oven-warm. I would go by the river first. I could still have my little moment, then meet Duggan and Rachel and their whole crew. I saw myself arriving in the woods, already immortalised as the gangly lad who went toe-to-toe with one of the Lyons brothers. It felt like the future and I were somehow turning through one another, already changing our shapes. As I left the cinema I felt ready for almost anything, even the sight of Teabag and Boomerang slouched and waiting for me at the bottom of the steps.
Colin grew up in the West of Ireland and began writing fiction in 2016. Another of his stories will be published this autumn, ‘Seen/Unseen’, which was shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award 2017.
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